Loveday Writing

This episode has Joyce get a makeover and Doug working on a secret project for Minx.

The episode kicks off with Joyce waking up in a hotel bed with Graham, the musician she met in the previous episode at Linda Ronstadt’s party. She tell him she has to leave because she has back-to-back meetings, only for him to convince her to stay.  Meanwhile, Doug jogs to work for the third day in a row, where it’s revealed that Bambi is now his probationary secretary. They are working together on a secret project to win Constance over.

When Joyce eventually gets to work, she meets up with Richie and Tina. Richie tries to pitch his bathhouse centrefold shoot idea to her but she drags out turning him down. Tina tells her to be more direct with rejection. Joyce then runs into Shelly, Shelly asks her if she made the edits to her Diaries of Bella LaRouche feature, and she hasn’t. Joyce then proceeds to talk about herself and her hair, much to Shelly’s annoyance.

Joyce later goes to see Constance, who tells her that their meeting is to update her wardrobe. Constance tells her that her wardrobe needs to catch up to the woman she has become, encouraging her to be powerful and feminine as no-one at her professional level is claiming sexuality and intelligence with equal confidence. When Joyce expresses doubts, Constance tells her to wear a flowy, white dress for the day and see how she feels by the end of it. Joyce tells Constance that she has enjoyed looking up to her, and Constance in turn tells Joyce she has enjoyed having a younger woman to fuss over.

Meanwhile, Tina finds Richie doing a centrefold shoot that is passive-aggressively targeted at Joyce. Tina tells him that he needs to tone it down as he will kill his career. Doug also has Shelly and Bambi working together on his secret project, despite Shelly’s best efforts to avoid Bambi. When they finish the work, Bambi asks Shelly if they should have sex now, but Shelly tells her that they can only stay friends. Later, Joyce goes to surprise Graham at his album photo shoot and impresses with her white dress, however she soon finds out that he is sleeping with a bunch of young women at the same time and quickly leaves.

Towards the end of the episode, Doug’s secret project is finally revealed – a Club Minx stage show. Bambi is starring as the main character and is surrounded by male strippers, with one of them “being born” at one point, which leads to Richie’s annoyance increasing as he believes Joyce approved this. Doug has one of the strippers, Xavier, dance for Constance, and Constance directs him to dance for Joyce. When Doug asks Joyce and Constance for their approval, Constance defers to Joyce, who rejects the Club Minx ideadirectly, based on Constance’s earlier philosophy saying that it can’t be both intelligent and sexy.

Afterwards, Richie shows Tina the photos from his shoot, successfully managing to scale back his anger. Tina then meets Doug at the back of the venue at his car, where it’s revealed he overpurchased speedos thinking the Club Minx idea would be a success. Doug also voices his frustration at Joyce being his boss. Tina tells him that they should get away for a while.

The episode ends with Graham going to see Joyce at her hotel room, which is directly across from his. Joyce rejects him after he tries to hook up with her and admitting to the truth about the other women. When Joyce shuts her hotel room door, it’s revealed that Xavier is in there with her.

Overall, I felt that this was more a filler episode that is providing a springboard for bigger things to come. Joyce is somewhat starting to feel more comfortable in her power and femininity, however the flip side to this is that Doug and Richie are expressing their frustrations and limitations of working under her, which is bound to cause trouble down the road. I also feel like Shelly went a little backwards in this episode – she was proud and confident as Bella LaRouche, but now she has reverted back to being shy, reserved and trying to avoid Bambi.

Now that we’re at the halfway point of the season, it will be interesting to see where we go from here.

Stray Observations:

Episode title – a line of dialogue during the Club Minx stage show.

Bambi tidbit – I thought I’d ask this new section to Stray Observations as Bambi is always revealing an interesting tidbit about her life in pretty much every episode. In this episode she reveals that she does her own dental work and she slept with a stepsibling who is a politician.

-Doug tells his receptionist that jogging has made him the healthiest he’s ever been, then proceeds to smoke a cigarette.

-Bambi calls Shelly ‘Shellfish.’

-Apparently a local archdiocese were initially okay with Doug and Bambi using their venue for their secret project.

-Apparently Nat King Cole sang at Constance’s wedding.

Best one liners and interactions:

• “I could have sworn I set my wake-up call for noon.” (Graham to Joyce when she wakes him up accidentally at 10:37am)
• “You do not need to dress like a man to earn the respect of one.” (Constance to Joyce)
• “You’re at 90% fuck you, you need to bring this thing down to like 10.” (Tina to Richie on his photo shoot with a Joyce look-a-like)